Monday, 21 November 2016

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Humbrol...

Swarm over, Death...............with apologies to John Betjemann...

Really, though. Why, after all these years, is there no regularly seen option to the above junk in toy/model shops. Revell, in exactly similar tins, was no better either.
In the good old days I could stock up on Floquil, of blessed memory and infinitely superior quality, but that had its formula changed and was emasculated years ago. With the demise of Victors, the shop, you can't get it anyway any more. Testors wasn't bad, but the importers no longer stock it and they were within toodling distance of me.

I NEED enamel to coat plastics used in building models as a first coat, then I can get away with gouache and watercolour overcoating, with powders as final colouration, but I would love to approach a stand, designed to be approached, not worshipped at on all fours, which has colour plates on the shelf edges that bear a slight resemblance to the colour on the tin lid and wouldn't it be good if the colour chart was anything other than emergency toilet paper? But the main thing is that it would be nice if, every time I go reluctantly, to buy another micro-tin of this garbage, it hadn't increased its price by another 10p a tin. It is now £1-90 for a tin, so small, that if you actually drank it, you'd barely taste it, much less do yourself any harm.

No doubt it's all part of the inexorable drive to force us to buy that water based crap called acrylic. Now I am of an age where acrylic is clear hard plastic, called Perspex. Not paint for heaven's sake. So Humbrol's second display stand is little more than a huge paperweight to me. Maybe somebody should remind them that their name is a contraction of the Humber Oil Company. Oil! Not pissy water.

I have bought today a tin of silvery grey, which I did by completely ignoring the colour chart and a tiny pot of brick red, which, if I'd have bought a tin called Brick Red, would have been a vaguely milk chocolatey shade of Gawd knows what muck.

They'd better work and be completely matt, or, by God, I will fast become their worst nightmare and enjoy every minute of being so!

That is my main objection to Humbrol too. The only acrylic paint I will use, and that's because I can buy them nearish here is Vallejo, which I find have a good pigment density, but still dry way too quickly and they are absolute pigs to mix in their little half bottle/half tube things. You MUST wash your brushes out every few minutes. I wouldn't have the patience for layers! I want my results NOW!!

About Me

I live in Eastern England with my wife and two mad dogs.
I amuse myself making models, painting and writing.
I am "of a certain age", which means of course that the spirit is forever young and free, but the joints are not always so willing, but I haven't ruled out Glastonbury just yet! All they have to do is improve the music and make it free to get in again and we'll be there.
I dislike pettyfogging rulemakers, lickspittles and toadies, laziness of both body AND mind, slubberdegullions and tatterdemalion flibbertigibetts, modern cars generally, ALL Japanese motorcycles and gin-palace boats.
I LOVE estuaries, sheds, old aeroplanes of the sporting type, vintage cars, British motorcycles, wooden boats and progressive rock music, not necessarily in that order.
I'm ambivalent about politics, managers, modern art and most people.
I like quiet, remote places where I can imagine the modern world has not yet made an impact (a hopeless task!)